Death of a Moral Nihilist
by Latest From The Asylum
Summary: His nightmares were of teeth. It was funny in a crooked kind of way. Of all the things to fret about—falling apart, losing those he loved, ceasing to exist—his fucked up thinkpan decided on teeth. He supposed it was because he had originally feared death, and it was hard to be terrified of something he now experienced day in and day out. So dental mutilation took death's place.


He bled from the left side first.

The ache dawned on him about as slowly as the blood oozed from the folds of his gills. The violet flare of the bruises collected along the dip of his waist and sluggishly crept to the small of his back, clouding over his skin akin to the way an oncoming tempest blots out the sky of an otherwise calm sea.

Eridan was still unsure of how to feel about all this death business. Particularly, he was unsure of how to feel about periodically having to remember and physically relive the process. He and his fellow dreaming dead cheekily referred to these ordeals as "recalls" and as one might imagine they were less than pleasant. They began half a sweep after the game had formally ended. Since the living had gone on to preside over their shared universe, the dead were left to inherit the remaining void of paradox space. For a time, things went as expected in their artificial afterlife. Reunions, confrontations, strifes, and dancestors came and went. Bubbles crossed, merged, and split. Networks were formed. Even less popular folk managed to make connections, Eridan being one of the more fortunate in this regard. Everything went swimmingly in the purgatory of dreams; all continued to wade through the synaptic slurry to their death's content.

Turned out dream bubbles were as mortal as their occupants. They began to decay. With the decay came the recalls, and everyone began gruesomely flickering between their corpses and their imagined selves.

The first time it happened to Eridan, he panicked. He had seen it twice before, first time as a startled bystander and the second as a caretaker plus shoulder to cry on. He had known would happen to him eventually, but it had been as far off a thought as death had been when he was alive. And, like death, the recall caught him by surprise in the worst possible way.

He was alone when he had begun to bleed. Frantically, he scrambled for someone to help. Anyone would do, but he severely hoped Feferi would be there for him as he had been for her.

Simply put, she wasn't. A quiet voice in the back of his mind suspected this was yet another installment in his dizzyingly deep debt to her.

He couldn't even find her sorry pissblooded excuse for a matesprit, which led him to assume they were off together. Most likely enjoying themselves. He didn't blame them. Really, he didn't. The gash gaping open along the lower curve of his ribcage kept him from assuming anything better.

Later Feferi found him and fussed over the aftermath while Sollux stood back as half-assed support.

_"I'm so sorry Eridan I—I had no glubbing idea!"_

It was strange hearing her apologize. Part of him wanted to tell her she didn't need to, that he was still making up for all the shit he put her through.

Another part wanted to point out that he had been the one holding her hair back while she vomited blood a week earlier.

Two sweeps had passed since then. Recalls soon proved to be a recurring thing, squashing any hope that they might magically get better by themselves. As sick as it made him to dwell on, Eridan had gotten used to it. He knew the warning signs; and he knew the best places to retreat to. He had become an expert at sweeping any and all discomfort under the rug.

Because obviously bottling up his turbulent emotions worked so well the first time around.

This was his tenth episode. He couldn't help but notice that the recalls were increasing in frequency, that the gap between them had since shrunken from several months to a single. _Monthly._

_"Eridan…" He didn't have to look to know what Feferi was referring to. The ache had already started. "You're bleeding."_

_"I know."_

_Sollux glanced up from his grubtop. "Your time of the month, Ampora?"_

_When Eridan's fist met Sollux's nose, the crack that filled the room was more than satisfying. Feferi shot him a sour look but he didn't apologize until he realized Sollux wasn't getting back up._

_"Shit." He muttered when Feferi darted to the collapsed troll's side. He's seizing. Blood seeped from his eyes like tears, mouth filled with crookedly jagged teeth gaped open in a silent scream. Eridan knelt beside Fef, helping her brace Sollux's limbs. "Looks like it's his time of the month, too."_

_The look Feferi shot him could cull an entire blood caste._

He braced himself right before white-hot pain flashed through him with a leg-numbing crack. Perfect timing acquired through practice. The remains of his sheared gills gaped as his lungs flooded, and soon his breath was lost to the blood bubbling up from his mouth. At this point, it was difficult for him to be aware of anything going on around him. He felt hands and the soft fibers of a towel press against him, and the ground vanished as he was lifted off the ground—or maybe he finally achieved unconsciousness. His head spun from blood loss, at the edge of dropping out of awareness. However, since it had been shock that had killed him and not a nutrient-starved thinkpan, he remained teetering on the borderline.

Eridan attempted to form words but his jaw was heavy and his tongue was an anchor drowning in a sea of violet. He snapped his mouth shut, nicking his tongue between his teeth. That injury would most likely keep with him past the recall, and while he'd hate himself for it later he was too preoccupied with the disorienting mix of current sensations and random-ass memories swirling around inside his skull.

The dead can dream, surprisingly. Eridan didn't know what it was like for others, but his were always nightmares. Not of his death or the terrible fates of his few loved ones or other cliché horrors typically expected of a ghost. No, death was old news. Empathy was a bore. He'd long since been jaded to that shit.

His nightmares were of teeth.

Grinding of thin, chipping enamel and the sour taste of blood as one by one his teeth fell from his mouth. He'd lift his fingers to his weeping gums only to find the same fate had befallen his nails. He'd claw without claws and gnash without teeth until something unseen would wrap around his neck like a noose and yank him back and the sharp scent of sea salt would knife through him moments before he was engulfed in its freezing waves. He'd twist and tumble at the mercy of an impossibly strong current, eyes useless against the lightless black of the deep.

Sometimes fragments of this terror would creep their way into his recalls, causing him to obsessively dig his nails into his palms and press his otherwise useless tongue against the serrated edges of his shark teeth until more pain lit across his mind.

It was a stupid fear to have. After all, his teeth fell out naturally to make room for healthier, stronger ones to rise out of the gums. It was that way for all seadwellers. In fact, it was funny in a crooked kind of way. Of all the things to fret about—falling apart, losing those he loved, hurting those he loved, ceasing to exist—his fucked up thinkpan decided on _teeth. _He supposed it was because his original fear had been death, and since he couldn't easily be terrified of something that he now experienced day in and day out, he had to adjust.

Apparently, dental mutilation had become his new death.

He avoided bringing it up with Feferi. He knew she was tough, arguably one of the more resilient of the dead, but she had her own fish to fry. She took everything concerning the dream bubbles personally, and now that they were backfiring she felt responsible for whatever suffering they caused their occupants.

She didn't smile nearly as much as she used to. Obviously she didn't smile much around Eridan, but even Sollux had mentioned she'd been uncharacteristically morose during their feelings jams. This made Eridan wish dearly that he could remedy all of this for her, that he could repair the bubbles with a flick of a wrist and wrap her in a blanket and tell her that she'd done well, that everything would be okay.

Everything would be okay.

_Everything was going to be okay. Right?_

Hope was supposed to be his thing. Life was hers and Doom was Sollux's. Even though it had been pointed out time and time again that his designation of Prince kind of nullified any hope-bringer fantasies he might have had, he still felt like he should do _something._

He hated standing by. He hated feeling worthless. Cod damn it, he wanted to prove that he wasn't some sort of ticking time bomb liability kept around only because an heiress pitied him and her red crush had been forced to share a mind with him for a period of time.

The cutting pain begins to nullify on the same side it had began. The recall was passing, and shortly he could feel the pin-prick sensation of feeling returning to his legs after a reunion between lower and top half so jarring that for a moment he only saw white.

Feferi's pitying expression was the first thing he became aware of. She had a washcloth pressed to his lips as she gave him a half-hearted smile. "Welcome back."

He closed his eyes, wanting to permanently erase that image from his mind.

_I never want to see that again. Never._

His name was Eridan Ampora and he was going to get shit fixed.

He only hoped that this time around, he wouldn't fuck it up.


End file.
